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Early PredPol adopters Los Angeles Police (Foothill Division) recorded a day without reported crime – the first known instance of such an event. The following comes from the LAPD Media Advisory:

On Thursday, February 13, 2014, LAPD’s Foothill Area recorded ZERO Part I crimes for the 24 hour period. This is the first time we have had a “day without (recorded) crime” in Foothill in recent memory and it may actually be the first time in our fifty year history where we had no crimes reported to the police.

This is a tremendous achievement and a milestone for Foothill Area. To record zero crimes in a 24 hour period in a 50 square mile area of the San Fernando Valley, home to more than 250,000 people, is a tribute to the partnership and teamwork between the police and the public that we have formed over the last few years and an endorsement of the dogged determination of the police officers, detectives and civilian personnel that strive every day to make Foothill Area a safer place to live, work and play.

By working closely with community groups, elected officials, other police agencies and social service providers the LAPD’s Foothill Area has been able to decrease crime significantly over the last five years. Crime has decreased steadily each year since 2009. Part I or serious crime has been reduced from nearly 5,000 crime victims in 2009 to 3,800 for 2013, a 23% reduction.

Violence is down even more dramatically from 888 victims of violence in 2009 to 510 last year. That means that 378 fewer people in the communities of Pacoima, Sun Valley and Sunland-Tujunga have been touched by violence in our streets.

And the trend is continuing this year. So far in 2014, crime is down 29% year-to-date. That equates to 150 fewer victims this year versus last year at this time…

New data driven techniques have also contributed to these declines including the use of a risk based deployment forecasting program from Santa Cruz-based PredPol, Inc. a predictive policing software firm; investigative analysis software designed by Palantir, another silicon valley company and real time data visualization and analysis tools from a partnership between LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff and a San Diego-based tech company called the Omega Group.

The use of advanced data analytics allows Foothill Area to place officers in the right place at the right time to prevent crime. The use of Predictive Policing here is a place-based prevention strategy that does not use arrest data and is not arrest-based at all. In fact, we have seen a decrease in arrests during the pilot testing that we have done.